Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft .Net Libraries Not Acting "Open Source"

Posted by kdawson on from the promises-broken-or-forgotten dept.

figleaf writes "Three years ago, with much fanfare, Microsoft announced it would make some of the .Net libraries open source using the Microsoft Reference License. Since then Microsoft has reneged on its promise. The reference code site is dead, the blog hasn't been updated in a year and a half, and no one from Microsoft responds to questions on the forum."

9 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. This should have been seen from the start by yakatz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As most people who have tried to write a blog can testify, it is hard to maintain a procedure by force; the reason why so many new blogs are abandoned. If the culture at Microsoft is anti open-source, it will take a constant effort to continue this type of project. The power was obviously not there.

    1. Re:This should have been seen from the start by jgagnon · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well... I didn't know it wasn't happening... :p

      --
      Remember to maintain your supply of /facepalm oil to prevent chafing.
    2. Re:This should have been seen from the start by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 5, Informative

      First, Microsoft did not promise anything open source. They promised a read-only shared source version under the reference license. They delivered that, and are still delivering it, though as of yet no .net 4.0 libraries.. but that's only a couple of weeks old.

      The reason the site hasn't been maintained was the the functionality was moved into visual studio for automatic download. It's just a part of the tools now.

      Basically, the entire story is wrong.

      --
      If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
  2. How is this different? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reference code site is dead, the blog hasn't been updated in a year and a half, and no one from Microsoft responds to questions on the forum.

    How is this different from the majority of "real" FOSS projects on SourceForge?

    1. Re:How is this different? by Americano · · Score: 5, Funny

      At the Microsoft site, nobody responds to your questions.

      At the SourceForge site, someone responds to your questions with, "You have the code, figure it out yourself, asshole."

      Worlds of difference, you see.

    2. Re:How is this different? by sunking2 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I agree. Sounds to me like they've fully embraced the Open Source mindset. They probably have to get rid of 75% of their documentation though.

    3. Re:How is this different? by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or they'll upload a javadoc/pydoc dump of their uncommented and undocumented code as well, which is about as useful as simply being told to figure it out yourself.

      Another possibility is of course that the maintainer comes up with some fairly lame excuse for not working on the project ("my dog had puppies a year ago and I've been completely dedicated to playing with them...") complete with promises of getting the project up to date ("...but I've been looking at some of the patches that have been submitted and there's gonna be a big update any day now.") which means most people will hold off on forking the project.

      Then there's the "it's in CVS" projects, you know them, those projects that are required by a whole host of apps yet they haven't had a proper release since 2006, and before that the last release was in 2003, but hey, you can just grab the extremely active development branch from CVS/SVN/Git!

      The last one has a close relative, the "1.x is featureless and out of date (but still gets security patches) and 2.x has been in alpha for three years now" projects. Just like the "it's in CVS" projects the bulk of interesting code for these tends to be in source control or in the 2.x.y.z.alpha23.tar.bz2 releases, and if you dare use the dev/alpha branch and find a problem with it and file a bug report you'd better be prepared to be chastised for not also submitting a patch...

      And last but not least there are the "closed" projects which rarely accept patches from "outsiders", they have a dedicated group of developers who will tell you to write your own patch and submit it when there's a bug that's been around for over a year with all reports closed as "WILLNOTFIX" or "NOTABUG", and when you do it will be rejected only to have one of the "regular" developers submit an almost identical patch a few days or weeks later (yes, this has happened to me a couple of times, can you feel the bitterness?).

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
  3. Summary Misleading by SomeJoel · · Score: 5, Informative

    I know it's fun to bash Microsoft and all, but the source site here is not, in fact, dead. The other points in TFS might be valid, but I have doubts as to the poster's credibility. I believe this "figleaf" character may just be trying to score some free karma or jollies or something by inciting the standard "M$ sux" response.

    --
    <Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
  4. It's because FOSS is no longer the biggest fear by ygslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Three years ago, the FOSS movement looked like one of the biggest potential threats against Microsoft. This move was designed to mitigate that threat, so it was worth investing energy in it. The idea was to dilute the concept of FOSS in the mind of the public, thereby weakening the FOSS "brand" as a competitor.

    Today, it is appears that Apple and Google are far bigger threats to Microsoft than FOSS ever will be. So Microsoft will not be investing significant energy in trying to dilute the concept of FOSS anymore.